Arduino OBD-II Kit available for order

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Stanley

After many researches and attempts to connect an Arduino with my car through the OBD-II port and having some successful works, I’ve finally made a kit which enables those who want to playing with Arduino and their cars to jump start quickly.

The Arduino OBD-II Kit consists of a OBD-II UART adapter based on a ELM327 compatible chip which provides an OBD-II to UART data bridge, and a dedicated open-source library for Arduino 1.0. The adapter outputs UART serial data and regulated 5V power supply sufficent for powering Arduino and some attached devices. The adapter can be used with any embedded system in addition to Arduino platform.

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Being at the BarCamp Shanghai today

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Stanley

Today I joined the BarCamp Shanghai. This was my first time being at such an event for hackers and innovators which was interesting to me. I gave a presentation about Arduino and OBD-II… again. Not much feedbacks on the spot but I got a guy from a car company (called QOROS which I never heard before) talking with after the presentation which might be some interesting opportunities who knows. Some pics of the event to share:

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BootDrive for Arduino

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Stanley

BootDrive for Arduino uses one Arduino with an SD card to bootload another Arduino by pretending to be the avrdude program that is used under the covers in the Arduino IDE. You hook up the hardware UART (serial port) on the two Arduinos with transmit and receive crossed, and load away!

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DIY a digital tachometer with Arduino & RGB LED matrix (video)

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Stanley

Today I tried making something with the Arduino RGB LED matrix and adapter shield on hand. The idea is to let the pixels of the matrix change in correspondent to the change of car’s engine RPM (or some other realtime data, maybe throttle position) and a step forward is to display a digit in different colors. The digit can even be displayed mirrored so the matrix can be put on the dashboard and reflect the digit on the window shield.

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Robot racing @ xinchejian

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Stanley

This gallery contains 12 photos.

Attempting to connect Arduino to an Android pad’s USB host

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Stanley

I just got a very cheap ($75) Android 4.0 pad, with 1.5Ghz dual-core processor, WIFI and especially a USB host port. Google’s Open Accessory ADK solution allows Arduino with a USB host to connect with an Android device. Because of my Android device has got the USB host port, I am thinking of the possiblity to eliminate the need for a USB host on the Arduino side.

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CodeBlocks Arduino IDE

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Stanley

Download | Screenshots | Changelog | Forum

CodeBlocks Arduino IDE is a customized distribution of the open-source Code::Blocks IDE enhanced for Arduino development. It provides more demanding software developers with everything a modern IDE should have including code foldering, code completion, code navgiation, compiling as well as uploading for Arduino. With a dedicated project wizard, it’s easy create a ready-to-go Arduino project. The distribution integrates latest Arduino core files, standard Arduino libraries, AVR toolchain, Arduino Builder, a serial terminal and most interesting, an API-level Arduino simulator (under development).
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Connect Arduino to your car through OBD-II

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Stanley

On-Board Diagnostics, or OBD, in an automotive context, is a generic term referring to a vehicle’s self-diagnostic and reporting capability. OBD systems give the vehicle owner or a repair technician access to state of health information for various vehicle sub-systems. The amount of diagnostic information available via OBD has varied widely since the introduction in the early 1980s of on-board vehicle computers, which made OBD possible. Continue reading →

Start playing with XBee

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Stanley

Weeks ago I bought a pair of XBee modules, an expansion shield with XBee socket for Arduino and a XBee USB adapter. Thinking it might be tricky to let them work, I haven’t opened the package until today. The first thing before I start playing with them is downloading the latest version of X-CTU which I heard of can configure and test the XBee module.

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